Won’t change my writing style for Bollywood: Chetan Bhagat

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New Delhi, May 1 (IANS) His books have found visual translation in Hindi movies, but author Chetan Bhagat remains unstirred by the glitz and glamour of the tinsel town and says he won’t change his style of writing to suit Bollywood’s sensibilities.

“I don’t want to change my writing style. I want to write books as books. I don’t want to change my books because of some film-related reason. I will continue to make my books as they are,” Bhagat told IANS over phone from Mumbai.

Most of his books like “The Three Mistakes of My Life”, “Five Point Someone” and “2 States: The Story of My Marriage” impressed Bollywood filmmakers enough to turn these into films.

The adaptations have garnered mixed response at the box office. While “3 Idiots”, based on “Five Point Someone”, and “2 States”, inspired by “2 States: The Story of My Marriage”, raked in a good business, “Kai Po Che”, a take on “The Three Mistakes of My Life”, got only tepid response.

“Hello”, based on “One Night @ The Call Centre”, turned out to be a dud at the boxoffice. Now two films based on “Revolution 2020″ and “Half Girlfriend” are in works.

It’s often seen that films aren’t able to do justice to the storyline in the book. But Bhagat notes that he “has been lucky” in that case.

“People have liked the films and I feel filmmakers have done justice to the book,” said the IIT-Delhi and IIM-Ahmedabad alumnus.

Talking about the film on “Half Girlfriend”, which is being helmed by Mohit Suri, he said: “We still have to start to work on it. But I have been kept in the loop. Mohit is busy in some other film right now, so the work on that film will start soon. I am co-producing ‘Half Girlfriend’. So, I am trying to be more and more involved.”

Bhagat, who is currently seen judging reality TV show “Nach Baliye 7”, has tried his hand at screenplay writing for Salman Khan-starrer “Kick”. And he notes that he will take up more such projects if “something different and unique” comes his way.
Satish Reddy